Hotel Langham , London

The Langham, London is one of the largest and best known traditional style grand hotels in London. It is in the district of Marylebone on Langham Place and faces up Portland Place towards Regent's Park. It is a member of the Leading Hotels of the World marketing consortium.The Langham, London was built between 1863 and 1865 at a cost of £300,000. It was then the largest and most modern hotel in the city, featuring a hundred water closets, thirty six bathrooms and the first hydraulic lifts in liquidated during an economic slump, new management acquired the hotel for little more than half what it had cost to build, and it soon became a commercial success. In 1870 a former Union officer named James Sanderson was appointed general manager and the hotel developed an extensive American clientele, which included Mark Twain and the miserly multi-millionairess, Hetty Green. It was also patronised by the likes of Napoleon III, Oscar Wilde, Antonín Dvořák, and Arturo Toscanini. Electric light was installed in the entrance and courtyard at the exceptionally early date of 1879, and Arthur Conan Doyle set Sherlock Holmes stories such as A Scandal in Bohemia and The Sign of Four partly at the Langham. Later celebrity guests included Noel Coward, Wallis Simpson, Don Bradman, Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia and Ayumi Hamasaki.